Support the Burn Pit Registry Act

We need your help! We have put together a let­ter that can be sent to your Con­gress­men or Sen­a­tor in sup­port of the Burn Pit Reg­istry Act of 2011. You can down­load the let­ter here. For more infor­ma­tion please read this arti­cle. Thank you for your support!

The Intoxicating Stench

The Intox­i­cat­ing Stench

You may be ask­ing your­self “What is the intox­i­cat­ing stench?” Well the answer is simple.…

Burn Pits

Iraq

When we landed in Balad AFB, Iraq the sky was filled with black smoke. Had a mor­tar hit the base or some­thing? No, it was burn­ing trash from inside the perime­ter fence. Since we lived on the oppo­site side of the base from where we worked, we had to take a bus to get there. We lived right across the street from these despi­ca­ble waste­lands, but our bus ride brought us even closer. That first trip to work it was warm out and the win­dows were all down. All of a sud­den a black haze, which reeked of burn­ing plas­tic, engulfed the bus. We were all cough­ing and hack­ing, then jok­ingly the bus dri­ver rang out with “Wel­come to Balad” and laughed.

Some of the guys that had already deployed here were use to the burn pits and paid no atten­tion to it. They warned of the “Iraqi crud” we would expe­ri­ence from the burn pits and the sand storms and that we would “get use to it.” There was no get­ting use to it..

Day after day the effects of the toxic inferno were noticed. I was con­stantly cough­ing, my nose would run non-stop, and it felt like I had a bad chest cold. I was seen numer­ous times by the flight doc­tor and nor­mally was given cough drops and sent on my way. Since I was not the type to just give in, I always pressed for­ward and did my job to the best of my abilities.

Unfor­tu­nately for every­one who has been deployed, there was no escap­ing the nox­ious sea of flames. My room was close enough to the burn pit that I would wake up and find soot on top of me. On excep­tion­ally bad days, when we left our dorms the cloud of smoke was so thick you couldn’t even see the sun in the mid­dle of the day. A few times I was assigned to “bird con­trol” duty. This entailed me going into the burn pits with­out any PPE (per­sonal pro­tec­tive equip­ment) and shoot­ing birds with pel­let guns to help pre­vent bird strikes on air­craft. I was prob­a­bly only in there for an hour or two, but I’m sure I breathed in smoke equiv­a­lent to five life­times of smok­ing. At the time I was just “fol­low­ing orders.”

Afghanistan

When we made it to our FOB in Afghanistan none of us really knew what to expect. It was a cold and des­o­late place. We also didn’t real­ize we were some of the only Amer­i­cans on our side of the base. Within hours of land­ing, a famil­iar aroma filled the air: burn­ing trash. We had been assigned a heli­pad close to the burn pit and directly across from the sling load area. This made for a par­tic­u­larly crappy deployment.

Soon we started expe­ri­enc­ing what can only be described as “black snow.” The ash and soot from the burn pits was plum­ing high into the air and rain­ing down upon us. It was dis­gust­ing. Every­thing we did sur­rounded the pit. The chow tent, work, and sleep­ing all of them would be engulfed in smoke depend­ing on the wind. Again, there was no escaping.

This is when many of my symp­toms started rear­ing their ugly head. For the entirety of the trip I couldn’t stop cough­ing. My throat was becom­ing raw and it was painful to swal­low my food. When I would try to run I would cough and get winded much faster than usual. What was hap­pen­ing to me?

Follow-Up

This intox­i­cat­ing stench has affected tens of thou­sands of vet­er­ans. I will never for­get that smell. Its repug­nancy is now burned into my nasal pas­sages. The dam­age it has caused is mind bog­gling. It’s time for Wash­ing­ton D.C. to do some­thing about it and not allow another 10 years of self-harming our veterans.

How was it that peo­ple thought this would have no neg­a­tive effects on our health? This ques­tion con­tin­ues to baf­fle me…